Top five PPC tips for online retailers in the lead up to Christmas

Christmas is my favourite time of the year. Nothing makes me
feel better than a few festive beverages and a bit of
'Wham' on a crisp Winter's day. Christmas is a time for
family and rest but for a lot of online retailers, Christmas 2010
was a tough trading period. Aggressive snowfalls and freezing
temperatures threw delivery dates and gift purchasing up in the air
for many Christmas shoppers and retailers. This, coupled with
continuing harsh economic realities, should push online retailers
to have more structured online plans for this Winter. So, in order
to ensure your paid search efforts are as successful as they can be
this Christmas, below are my top 5 pay per click (PPC) Festive
Tips:

1) Plan
and Promote Earlier

The Festive period is the busiest time for retailers. Companies
must plan ahead this year and use what they learnt from last Winter
to secure sales and ensure customers do not suffer should the bad
weather reoccur. If you are a retailer, start pushing your
Christmas offers earlier to encourage people to purchase sooner.
The last three years have seen consistent increases in the time of
the year consumers begin searching for Christmas offers; so, why
not hit these people earlier to ensure the weather this year does
not wreak havoc with your Q4 performance?

Think strategically as well. The biggest retail days for web
visits last year were December 5th and 6th; For 2011 they are
forecast to be December 4th and 5th. Therefore, ensure
your ad copy and accounts are optimised to allow for "always on"
visibility, as much as your budget will allow at these times, and
display ad copy that incentivises the customer to click with a
strong offer and call to action.

2) Think
Mobile

Dec 25th last year saw huge spikes in mobile searches as
people looked for products and deals when they were away from their
PCs and also whilst they played with their new phones and tablets.
Mobile and Tablet searches have seen strong growth this year and,
with mobile sales increasing from 3% to 6%, according to IBM
Coremetrics over the last year, this channel is becoming
progressively more important. With that in mind, it is
important to ensure you have clearly built out mobile and tablet
campaigns to guarantee you capture these searches. Create mobile
suited ad copy with different sitelinks to your search campaigns as
mobile will only display 2 as opposed to 4 or 6 on PCs.

Consider creating a separate Google Adwords account for your
mobile activity. Although Google has not announced any changes to
quality score for mobile searches, it must be coming and thus
gaining mobile only history in an account purely for this platform
can only be a good thing.

Targeting tablet users, in Tablet focussed campaigns, is
something I would also advocate. Ebay research from last Christmas
has shown tablet users tend to spend 50% more than PC users,
therefore it is worth having tailored campaigns for these devices.
Break your campaigns out into separate areas for both Android and
iPads. Learnings from having both platforms broken out can allow
for further optimisation and a specific platform strategy to be
developed into 2012.

3) Budget
Management

All categories will start to see increases in their cost per
clicks (CPCs) from late October onwards as demand increases, and as
additional advertisers become more aggressive in the run up to
Christmas. It is important you budget sufficiently well to be able
to handle a 5% -10% increase in CPCs along with the corresponding
increase in traffic. Analyse previous years' data to accurately
forecast and use tools like Google Insight for Search to estimate
demand trends and spikes.

4) Optimise Now and Regularly

Online sales and traffic are forecast to grow this year so, if
you are a small retailer whose budget is limited, it is important
to maximise efficiencies across your PPC accounts to make sure
spend goes as far as it can. Review search query reports (SQRs)
more forensically and build out more long tail keyword terms. These
can be cheaper with the right match types and can ensure you are
not wasting money on keyword matches that are not completely
relevant to your business. Review your campaign setting, ensuring
you are visible at the right times, basing your scheduling
decisions on full conversion path information rather than last
click data if possible. Optimise on a weekly, if not bi-weekly
basis, as this will enable you to spot any trends through your
SQRs, CPC developments or specific campaign growth or declines.

5) Get
all Channels Working Together

Link in your other online channels with your PPC efforts. Have
email and any social media efforts follow up the week before
Christmas to encourage any last minute shoppers. Clearly
communicate last delivery dates and any last minute offers to
ensure you push customers towards purchase. If you are a food or
grocery retailer, plan for spikes the week before Christmas and New
Year to ensure you are visible for any last minute food and drink
orders, to cater for festive parties. Align all channels at key
points, change all efforts to suit the week and predicted demand
that is coming down the line. If you have attribution modelling and
full channel tracking available from last year, analyse this data
and use any data on the interaction of the different channels in
the sale funnel to feed into your Christmas strategy.

Hopefully the above will get you thinking and on the right road
to a Merry Christmas.